so profundo-redundo pushed the egg-stealer's high pitch
aside. "If this squeaker will quit interrupting, perhaps we can get on
with the rescue. We'll talk later, if you don't mind."

At that moment Lusine's voice floated up from the bottom of her cell.
"Jean-Jacques, my love, my brave, my own, would you abandon me to the
Chalice? Please take me with you! You will need somebody to hide you
when the Minister of Ill-Will sends his mucketeers after you. I can
hide you where no one will ever find you." Her voice was mocking, but
there was an undercurrent of anxiety to it.

Mapfarity muttered, "She will hide us, yes, at the bottom of a
sea-cave where we will eat strange food and suffer a change.
Never...."

"Trust an Amphib," finished Archambaud for him.

Mapfarity forgot to whisper. "_Bey-t'cul, vu nu fez yey! Fe'm sa!_" he
roared.

A shocked hush covered the courtyard. Only Mapfarity's wrathful
breathing could be heard. Then, disembodied, Lusine's voice floated
from the well.

"Jean-Jacques, do not forget that I am the foster-daughter of the King
of the Amphibians! If you were to take me with you, I could assure you
of safety and a warm welcome in the halls of the Sea-King's Palace!"

"Pah!" said Mapfarity. "That web-footed witch!"

Rastignac did not reply to her. He took the broad silk belt and the
sheathed epee from Archambaud and buckled them around his waist.
Mapfarity handed him a mucketeer's hat; he clapped that on firmly.
Last of all, he took the Skin that the fat egg-stealer had been
holding out to him.

For the first time he hesitated. It was his Skin, the one he had been
wearing since he was six. It had grown with him, fed off his blood for
twenty-two years, clung to him as clothing, censor, and castigator,
and parted from him only when he was inside the walls of his own
house, went swimming, or, as during the last seven days, when he laid
in jail.

A week ago, after they had removed his second Skin, he had felt naked
and helpless and cut off from his fellow creatures. But that was a
week ago. Since then, as he had remarked to Lusine, he had experienced
the birth of a strange feeling. It was, at first, frightening. It made
him cling to the bars as if they were the only stable thing in the
center of a whirling universe.

Later, when that first giddiness had passed, it was succeeded by
another intoxication--the joy of being an individual, the knowledge
that he was separate, not a part of a multitude.